The use of a restraint system as a safety harness utilizing webbing attached to a seating structure is very common in juvenile products. Examples of such juvenile products are car seats, infant carriers, and swings. Normally, the safety harness for the seating structure of the juvenile product needs to be attached securely, so as to pass product restraint requirements, yet the attachment also has to designed so as to allow removal of the webbing from the seating structure to facilitate cleaning and to re-position the webbing material to another location on the juvenile product in order to better accommodate the size of the child.
The restraint system is typically a harness formed from webbing material, which can be constructed from polypropylene, nylon, polyester or other suitable materials, that is formed to provide an end structure that is larger than the webbing material and can be oriented to provide a restriction to the passage of the harness belt through the slotted opening in the back of the juvenile product. One such harness belt would include a buckle affixed to the end of the belt that would rotate on the end of the belt to occlude the passage of the belt through the slotted opening in the juvenile product. Another harness belt configuration has the webbing material folded over on itself at the end of the harness belt and sewn to provide a flap that is oriented perpendicularly to the harness. In known juvenile products, the product is provided with a slotted opening that has a dimension that will allow the passage of the webbing with the occluding structure (e.g. buckle, flap, etc.) retracted flat against the webbing and held in this retracted state manually. Once the occluding structure is passed through the slotted opening, the occluding structure is released and allowed to return to the normal orientation that is perpendicular to the webbing. In this normal orientation, the occluding structure cannot pass back through the slotted opening and the webbing is retained on the juvenile product for utilization as a safety harness.
Removing the harness from engagement with the juvenile product requires that the occluding structure be accessible from behind the seating structure so that the occluding structure can once again be folded over against the webbing material and manually restrained in this position until passed back through the slotted opening in the structure. While this method of attachment of the end of the safety harness to the seating structure is very effective and very functional, the requirement to be able to access the rearward side of the seating structure to be able to fold the occluding structure over onto the webbing material prevents the back side of the juvenile product from being finished with a smooth cover or other aesthetically pleasing structure, as such a covering structure would prevent access to the occluding structure at the end of the harness webbing material.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a system for attachment of webbing material forming the safety harness of a juvenile product to allow for easy removal of the harness belt from the product without restricting or defacing the aesthetic appearance on the back side of the product.